Obligation, Duties and Morality?

By aljovin, in Game Masters

I've read that some have been incorporating the 3 concepts together, so that some characters uses Obligation, others Duty and lastly some Force sensitive uses the Morality.

The mechanic behind Obligation (and I assume Duty, I haven't read that one much, we don't run rebellion characters) are relatively easy to "merge", 1-30 Obligation for PC1, 31-45 Duty for PC2, then you roll the percentage to trigger the obligation/duty.

My question is what happens with Morality? How do you incorporate it? Do you do 2 checks, one for the Obligation/Duty and one for Morality?

I have characters using both Morality and Obligation. That's how I do it, one check for both.

I have a question regarding Obligation though. It would appear that one can gain obligation through a variety of sources. That being said, you actually have a lot of little obligations rather than one big one. Is that how its supposed to be played.

5 Obligation = owen starport authorities for ignoring you lack of documentation

10 Obligation = losing while gambling and owing the house

5 Obligation= failing to deliver an expected shipment of goods to a patron

total = 20 obligation but has to be tracked separately so as to be able to pay each down appropriately or add to them.

I've read that some have been incorporating the 3 concepts together, so that some characters uses Obligation, others Duty and lastly some Force sensitive uses the Morality.

So first off they work well together, in particular Morality+Obligation and Morality+Duty. Typically Duty and Obligation are a little trickier to have working together. This is due to Morality being a very internal thing, while Ob/Duty are very external. The most common way to do it is chose a single system and everyone has that to begin with, then some characters have one of the other systems as well, but crucially only gain the xp/credit bonus from one of the O/D/M systems. The FaD core book actually has a nice section on this in the GM's chapter. Mostly a group will decide to use O or D then the characters with careers from FaD will also have Morality.

The mechanic behind Obligation (and I assume Duty, I haven't read that one much, we don't run rebellion characters) are relatively easy to "merge", 1-30 Obligation for PC1, 31-45 Duty for PC2, then you roll the percentage to trigger the obligation/duty.

Dont "merge" the systems, they need to be tracked in seperate lists. Obligation is something that PC's want to reduce, while Duty is something PC's are wanting to increase. Very different things hapen when the groups total Duty reaches 100 vs Obligation reaching 100.

My question is what happens with Morality? How do you incorporate it? Do you do 2 checks, one for the Obligation/Duty and one for Morality?

So as i noted above keep the systems seperate, therefore if you have all 3 within 1 game you will be making 3 checks. Also make the checks at the end of each session, not the beggining, it makes planing the next session soooo much easier.

I have characters using both Morality and Obligation. That's how I do it, one check for both.

I have a question regarding Obligation though. It would appear that one can gain obligation through a variety of sources. That being said, you actually have a lot of little obligations rather than one big one. Is that how its supposed to be played.

5 Obligation = owen starport authorities for ignoring you lack of documentation

10 Obligation = losing while gambling and owing the house

5 Obligation= failing to deliver an expected shipment of goods to a patron

total = 20 obligation but has to be tracked separately so as to be able to pay each down appropriately or add to them.

This is perfectly OK and exactly how it should be done, tracked separately.

So do you still use a Destiny pool when you have Morality and Obligation/Duty mixed in?

Yep. the Destiny pool runs through all three systems. PC morality is the only one to affect it though.

When the parties total Obligation reaches 100 then no one can spend any XP until they pay some of it off

When the parties total Duty reaches 100 all duties reset to 0 and everyone gets a piece of gear for free. The entire party also go up by 1 in a thing called Contribution Rank, its analogous to the Parties rank in the Rebellion (or whatever organisation they have Duty too). The free thing gets better the hight the parties contribution rank, and if everyone combines their gift it can be a single Vehicle or Ship instead, or an upgrade to a Base.

Edited by Richardbuxton

I track Duty and Morality separately, and roll once with a percentile at the start of each session/Chapter. Then I compare the result to both tables.

I only have one player with Morality, so his only triggers if my percentile total is within 5 points of his current score (so a Morality of 50 triggers on a roll of 45-55).